Judge Blocks FDA Depositions on Outbreak

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A federal magistrate judge has ruled that a Rhode Island clinic cannot depose officials of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in its efforts to defend against civil litigation stemming from the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak.
In a seven-page ruling issued today in Boston, Mass., U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer C. Boal said lawyers for the Ocean State Pain Management "may not attempt an end run" of an earlier order by taking depositions of individual FDA employees.
Ocean State had also sought Boal's approval to depose other individual's involved in pending criminal action including former employees of the New England Compounding Center and its sales arm, Medical Sales Management.
Boal, however, reaffirmed a ban on depositions of the FDA, former NECC employee Joseph Connelly, MSM salesman John Notarrianni, now imprisoned former NECC President Barry J. Cadden and former NECC sales chief Robert Ronzio.
Boal concluded that a federal law does not prevent the court from staying the depositions because the action was sought by federal prosecutors. Injunctions are warranted, she added, to prevent state courts from interfering with a federal court's consideration of a case "so as to seriously impair the federal court's flexibility and authority to decide the case."
She did add that her order did not prevent Ocean State from deposing other NECC related witnesses "not specifically stayed by the court's prior order."
The Ocean State cases are just a few of hundreds filed in the wake of the meningitis outbreak that took the lives of 76 patients and sickened hundreds of others.
Just last week NECC's supervising pharmacist Glenn Chin was convicted on racketeering and mail fraud charges. He was cleared of second degree murder charges. His sentencing is set for Jan. 30. Co-defendant Barry J. Cadden already is serving a nine year prison sentence.
Still other related defendants are awaiting trial.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com